The Most Merciful Way to Wage Warfare

Now we know why our Punahou-educated president feels so comfortable in a kindergarten classroom:

President Obama compared the Republican budget plan to a “stinkburger” or “meanwich” during a speech here Wednesday, using a series of zingers in an attempt to strike a contrast with the GOP on economic issues in an election year.

In a speech to an enthusiastic crowd of 1,400 at the University of Michigan, Obama repeatedly mocked Republican ideas about how to improve the economy, as he touted his own proposal to raise the minimum wage.

Obama, who visited the local Zingerman’s deli before the speech, said that Republican proposals to cut taxes for wealthier Americans and federal investments in education, as well as replace his federal health-care program, would harm the economy.

The GOP has proposed the same ideas so many times, Obama said, “It’s like that movie ‘Groundhog Day,’ except it’s not funny. If they tried to sell this sandwich at Zingerman’s, they’d have to call it the stinkburger or the meanwich.”

Hard to know where to begin with one. The uncritical use by the reporter of the term “federal investments”? A “crowd” of 1,400? A “series of zingers” from the Commander in Chief? “Mockery” from the bully pulpit? Can it be that Obama really doesn’t listen to himself, weigh his words, or respect what, pre-Clinton, we used to laughingly call the “dignity of the office”? Surely somebody wrote those lines for him; this is, after all, a man whose forays off-prompter often end in disaster:

More likely, he simply doesn’t care. His glide path to the presidency has been marked by one thing in particular: no one has ever said “no” to him about anything. He went to one of the most exclusive (and, if you’re into racial bean-counting, whitest) private prep school in Hawaii, then skated through Occidental, Columbia and Harvard while leaving nary a mark or a memory. More than five long years into the Obama presidency, it’s clear that his sense of the job is entirely confined to its ceremonial aspects — parties, vacations, junkets — and to campaigning, which is the only thing he’s any good at.

And yet, to this we’ve come: a country in which style trumps substance, to the cheers of the media. And does Obama ever have style: from the moment he delivered his famous speech at the 2004 Democrat convention as an obscure state senator running for the U.S. Senate, I knew he would be the party’s next nominee, and that he would probably win. The only thing that might have blocked his ascension was Sarah Palin, and once the media recovered from the shock of her nomination and acceptance speech, their knives bloodied her badly — with John McCain, of course, doing nothing to defend her. Indeed, I parodied the reaction in my viral NRO piece, “I Hate You, Sarah Palin“:

But she’s not a Democrat, which despite her va-va-va-voom appearance, means she’s not really a woman, which is one of the reasons we’ve spent the past four days since McCain unveiled her trying to tear her limb from limb. Just because she’s the governor of a state sandwiched between two obscure and unimportant countries, Canada and Russia, and spent more time in her first five minutes visiting American troops in Iraq than Evita Barry did during his entire Rainbow Tour, what could she possibly know about foreign policy? It’s not like she’s John Edwards or something.

So that’s why we’re having our Wellstone Funeral Moment at the moment. We mean well; we promised ourselves we wouldn’t go over the top with our outright loathing of the Neanderthals who preach “Christian” values while practicing Wiccanism and child sacrifice and who hate black people and gay people and want to destroy the environment just because they can, and want to amass more money than even John Kerry or Jon Corzine or Herb Kohl or Jay Rockefeller or Dianne Feinstein — the five richest senators — or Ted Kennedy or John Edwards or Nancy Pelosi have. That, usually, is the Kos Kidz’s job. Along with speculating exactly how Bush got from My Pet Goat to planting the depth charges that blew up the levees in New Orleans.

But sometimes the mask slips and you can see — whoops! — how much we hate you. Normally we’re against hate in all its forms, and embrace tolerance as one of our defining moral attributes. But when it comes to you conservatives, well, with the best will in the world, we just can’t tolerate you. You’re elitist, you’re judgmental, you’re hypocritical, and we know that deep down you hate us even more than we hate you. Therefore, by any means necessary, we will defeat you this fall. Voter fraud, “walking around” money, legions of lawyers, as many recounts as it takes — bring it on!

So why we should be surprised at “stinkburger”? As Lucianne.com drily noted on its post this morning, What next? Republicans are “poopyheads”?

Pure Uncle Billy:"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war. The United States does and must assert its authority, wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes one bit to pressure, it is gone, and I believe that such is the national feeling."

Sherman always thought highly of U. S. Grant, if for no other reason that Grant didn't give a fig about what the other guy was planning or thinking, he always concentrated on beating the other guy in the field. Grant was implacable, impossible to spook, and he always kept on coming, no matter what the enemy did.

Being a resident of Germany I do spend much time watching documentaries on WW II. Those on Nazis go, happily, further than battles, while info about civilian Japan is scarce. My father had been a commander on the Califiornia, later sunk at Pearl Harbor (I have on my frontroom wall a large black/white photo of the ship in NY probably towards the end of the 1930s). Only by some fluke I was not called to serve in Vietnam (which I would have done). Since Truman abandonned McCarthur's wish to take all of Korea, then Johnson's limiting Vietnam to keeping just half of it, and Bush 2's undermanning the occupation force in Irak upto Obama's announced war with dated ending, win or not, in Afghanastan, I have noted a change in military doctrine emanating from the politicians. What was done in WW II?

America conquered a great deal alone the best navy with modern carriers, best trained pilots and a fleet of battleships (including the Yamato) and most hardest of hard soldiers imaginable (on Iwo only about 300 of some 22k Japanese survived the attack (not to mention Tawara) and America took on the best land army of the day, the Wehrmacht, with excellent an airforce and a lethal submarine fleet and brought THAT war to a bloody end, but to an end, within 4+ years with the loss of 400,000 dead soldiers compared with some 3 million German soldiers and, I believe, about 1 million Japanese soldiers. The war was fought to win, demanding total capitualtion of the enemy, and followed up by winning the peace, i.e., years long occupation of the defeated countries from which Germany and Japan had much profit.

The key was "to fight to win" and "win" meant that the beat the enemy into submission and then "win" the peace. Since WW II we have not attempted seriously to win the war (Vietnam, Korea) or theoccupation and peace (Iraq) and it appears that Afganistan will be a double loss. America did not lose the peace in Libya, it was not there.

Sherman said, "War is hell." And he fought at if he meant what he said. War should be hell; it should be terrible; it should be swift. These American wars of the last half century plus have cost more in lives, treasury, and stability by far than if we had simply - yes, simply - gone in to crush our enemies with overwhelming force. We could have done, which we can still do, but lack the fortitude and wisdom from the past to do so.

Only a nation in decline concerns itself with the welfare of its sworn enemies above those of its own soldiers and citizens.